Once every three weeks I have to process every single stupid paper the library gets. I hate it - it’s dirty, it’s monotonous, it makes your back hurt, and you have to put them in order. Thank my lucky stars, today we did not get the Sunday editions of the New York Times or the London Times in. The LA Times was biggish, as was the Dallas one, but nothing near the monstrosities that New York and London throw out all the time. Sometimes I suspect they break the weight limits of what my job description requires I carry!
So among you people who live in, say, New York, London, and other very large cities - do people really read that? Seriously? Sometimes they run out of alphabet to name the sections with! Not to mention magazines and book review sections and all sorts of other crap. Around here, people sit down and read the paper cover to cover. Are the New York and London Timeses just big practical jokes that you guys play on the rest of the world?
When I buy the Sunday Times, I do read a lot of it, although I am often not turning to the Book Review until Tuesday. Unless I’m blanking, the only section I never actually look at is Automotive (it’s one pointless article and a bunch of ads). Some sections never get better than a skim (Real Estate might have a good cover story, but 85% of the time it’s so pitched to the incredibly weathly that it’s practically science fiction; Styles is mostly stupid unless you’re entertained by the wedding banns; only a small portion of the Metro and local sections are usually of interest to me). There’s something comforting about laying aside that hour or two, going through 2 cups of coffee and the Sunday paper all spread out on the floor.
In fact, most other Sunday papers seem wanting to me. When I lived in Austin I gave up on the American-Statesman because it didn’t take enough time to read; I just started spending money on the Times.
Here the 4 big English-language papers are on Saturday, but yes, I do buy and read the whole thing. At least the Star. The Globe, the Sun and the Post, not so much. I used to buy three and my co-worker would buy the fourth every day, and we’d read them all at the lunch table, passing them around.
I regularly read more than one article from the Front Page, Business, Sports, Week in Review, and NY Times Magazine.
I read at least one article each from Travel, Book Review, Arts & Entertainment. I glance at the style section, but it’s rare that there’s an article there I enjoy.
Yeah, the Sunday Times is ridiculous. But…if you’ve got a whole family, a surprising amount gets read. When there was five of us together, the news and culture sections would be read several times, the magazine, travel & lifestyle stuff went straight to the females and the sports and cars to the men, and somebody would no doubt have a curious peer through the property section. Probably the only things unopened are the ‘appointments’ (I love it how some people are too important to have a ‘job’) and the kids’ stuff.
I don’t buy a Sunday paper now I’m on my own, because it really does feel like a waste of money.
Oh, another thing, note that the British Sunday papers, and to a lesser extent the Saturday editions of the weekday ones, are far far larger than anything you get Monday-Friday.
Is any of that to do with the readability of the tabloid format on public transit? I know that here in Chicago people are more likely to read the Sun Times (tabloid) as opposed to the Tribune (broadsheet) on the El, Metra, or bus, as it’s easier to fold and read.
Oh, and I do read the majority of the Chicago Tribune Sunday edition. There are some pieces I skip (fashion, comics, the 1,000s of advertisements), but I read it over the space of the entire day.
Yes, it was one of the main reasons. Not just on transport - sat on a sofa, or in fact pretty much anywhere other than a big empty table, a broadsheet can be a hassle.
I always wonder about this too - but not because of the size, because of Law & Order.
Every time there’s a murder, everyone they talk, no matter what walk of life, to has already heard about it from “the paper” by the next day.
And every time there’s a trial, someone refuses to testify because everything they say will be in “the paper” and every person in the world will know their dirty secrets and they won’t be able to walk down the street anymore.